Facts about the Bible Monday, January 21, 2019

There are several ways that the Lord communicates with us. First and foremost He has communicated with us through the written word, the Bible. He spoke audibly to the prophets of old for 4,000 years which is recorded in the Old Testament. God came to earth in the form of the man Jesus and He spoke volumes to us. He also has spoken to us through the authors of the New Testament who were men who were trained by Jesus. He continues to speak to us today through many people that have a prophetic function and through various anointed vessels that He chooses to use.

Because of those that mock the Bible and because the Intellects consider the Bible to be a book of fairy tales, I would like to interject some facts about the Bible at this point that should silence even the most intellectual and solidify the accuracy of the Bible. For the Bible has stood the test of time. It is the only book that has accurately foretold the future. In total, the Bible is 27% Prophecy, predicting many things such as the rise and fall of Nations and kings throughout history. Since the Bible’s emphasis is on the King of kings, Jesus, I did some research on the fulfillment of the prophecies concerning just Jesus’ first and second coming. There are a great number of discrepancies in the actual number of prophecies that are about our Lord in the Old Testament. The reason for this I discovered is because some of the same prophecies are repeated by different authors at different times in history. Many of them have recorded the same events that were to occur in history. In total, we have around 700 references in the Hebrew text about the coming of the Messiah.

First, let’s look at the astonishing fulfillment of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled in his first coming. From Genesis to Malachi there are prophecies that foretell the exact events of Jesus’ life; from identifying his place of birth, to the account of the Roman soldiers tossing lots for his garments at the foot of the cross. These prophecies span 4,000 years, written by different prophets at various times in the 4,000-year history. All of these prophecies were written long before the man Jesus was ever born. Yet the accuracy in which they were fulfilled by Jesus is astounding!

Mathematicians have figured the odds of one single person fulfilling all 700 of these prophecies, (which history confirms; Jesus did fulfill concerning His first coming) is so astronomical that our minds could not possibly comprehend it. For instance, Dr. Peter Stoner estimated the odds against just 48 of only 300 or so Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah to be fulfilled in one person. He calculated the odds at 1 in 10 to the power 157.[1] What it means for these prophecies to be fulfilled by just one person is 1 in 1,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.00

I cannot go on because the zeros would continue to fill up several pages. Jesus, however, fulfilled more than just 48, He fulfilled around 700. If the odds are calculated, those calculations would fill an entire book full of zeros. These odds are so beyond what our minds can comprehend that one has to conclude that none of these predictions and their fulfillment has happened by chance. It is only possible because of the supernatural hand of God almighty who has written history in advance of it happening, through the prophets of old. History, after all, is, of course, His story.

Dr. Mark Hitchcock has a book on prophecy in which he mentions that there are more than 300 references to the Lord's coming in the New Testament, which has only 260 chapters. Prophecy makes up twenty-eight and one-half percent of the New Testament. There are over 300 prophecies concerning Christ's Second Coming in the New Testament — one out of every 30 verses. He also states that there are 109 prophecies of His first coming (which He fulfilled completely), yet there are 224 that forecast His Second Coming. Twenty-six books of the New Testament refer to the promise of His coming, and three of those were personal letters to individuals.[2] The rest highlighted this important doctrine that was preached in the earliest days of the church. It would do the Church well if these truths were preached today.

This statistical data are facts, not just someone’s opinion. Therefore, an honest intellectual must come to terms with the fact that his own personal opinion is contrary to the mathematical facts of history and the prophecies of the Bible. I believe this kind of information is so important because of all the negative input in our culture today concerning the Bible. Those who continue believing it’s a book full of fairy tales and old wife’s tales have not yet considered the astronomical odds presented here, and they have not yet come in contact with Jesus personally. Jesus is the volume of the Book we call the Bible. All anyone has to do is ask God to prove His existence to you, and He will if your heart is sincere. He wants to be intimately acquainted with you. We can have great hope that Jesus will indeed fulfill the remaining prophecies about Himself because He has proven to us that the Word of God is true and trustworthy by fulfilling every single prophecy concerning his first coming. Even though some of those prophecies were written about him long before He was even born. The Bible is the only book with a voice that speaks accurately about events before they happen.

It is a thrill and a wonderment to hear the voice of the Lord either audibly or by hearing that small still voice from deep within where the Holy Spirit resides when one is “born again” and has been baptized in the Holy Spirit. The truth is, however, that if the Lord would choose to never speak again to anyone, we have in the written text enough information to last us a lifetime. The Bible is definitely the greatest book ever written.